Amsterdam Russ

Happy New Year everyone. I hope your Yuletide and New Year celebrations have been plentiful and that the year ahead offers you good health, prosperity, happiness and endless photo opportunities. To kickstart the new edition of the fabulous "Show us your great photos" thread, I offer not a pic but a video. We took this last night and it shows, in all its glory, the incredible firework display we offered our neighbours from the comfort of our balcony. If you watch the video you'll see our neighbours' fantastic fireworks going off in the background - and then there's ours. This is what you get when you buy a box of mini fireworks from your local cheapskate supermarket (Albert Heijn) for the princely sum of 10 euros! Still, it was so crap it was a laugh, which means it actually offered great value for money. I hope the vid of our box of damp balcony squibs also raises a smile with you. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Amsterdam!

Thanks, Steve. I might have started the original thread, but its success is entirely because of the now countless wonderful photos everyone has shared here. As I mentioned not so long ago, I've hardly been out and about with my camera at all this year. The only real exception being when we went on holiday in the summer. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to change that in the new year and start contributing more regularly once again. Thanks, then, to you and everyone who's made "Show us your great photos (2016)" as good as, if not even better than, the 2015 thread. And here's looking forward to the 2017 edition, which I'm sure will offer up even more fantastic selections, and which I'll start up once we leave the old year and cross the threshold of the new one. Cheers, all!

Very sad to hear.

A damp cloth (as lint free as possible) can help.

With good cheer to one and all!

Absolutely. Just going by eBay alone, the number of purchases I've made this year has dropped by around two thirds - from 90-something down to 30-something. The cost of shipping has been a major factor in putting me off, especially when looking at items in the two-figure price range. Additionally, there is no consistency to mailing costs. Prices for mailing one 45 from the USA to Europe can range from around $8-9 to $40-something through eBay's global whatsit programme. Even buying from the UK and shipping to the Netherlands can cost around £11 for signed for/insured delivery. And around £8.50-9 for standard tracked delivery is too much if the item is under a certain price range. Throw in the increasing likelihood of being hit by import charges as the receiver (something that'll affect UK/EU purchases in the not too distant future), and buying records across borders is becoming increasingly unattractive.

Another one to add to the Christmas list!

Haha - something along those lines. Certainly that's what my pics portray. I didn't post up all the others I took of the cosier traditional aspects. They do a great job putting this together every year, and it is a huge display. At the end of the Christmas day though, its a retail garden centre (80,000 m2 - the largest in the Netherlands) and the only purpose is to pull in customers and get them to buy stuff, which they seem to do well.

Not reindeer, but cow skulls - except for the one in the middle of the table, which looks like it came from a water buffalo. Thing is, just to add to the surreal effect, they're actually man-made. So somewhere there's a factory making these for sale to everyday consumers. I find that weird!

Took a visit to our local garden centre as they always put on a huge festive display. It's all very well done, although in places it can have something of a surreal quality about it. Judge for yourself...

Oddly (or not), the first thing that came to my mind was that it was a macro photo of grooves on an lp?

Really has been ages since I've been out with my camera, Steve. Don't know why either. Just haven't felt the inspiration, I guess. Have to say you're exactly spot on. It is indeed raindrops hitting the small waterway running next to our apartment. The light source is a streetlight on the other side. I'd seen the effect of rain hitting that patch of water before when standing on our back balcony and have become quite fascinated by it. Finally thought I'd have a go at capturing the effect - and about time too!

A couple more...

Dusted off my NIkon for the first time in ages last night. Have to say I'm rather pleased with the results!

Glorious late October sunshine illuminating some of the blooms still remaining on our balcony.

No allnighters over here, but will have been to four soul events in Amsterdam by the end of the month.

A number of Caribbean islands still have close ties to the Netherlands, of course, just as Suriname does, so reckon it's highly plausible copies might have reached other islands as well. Love it!

Information received from a magnificently helpful source with universally superior knowledge than mine posits that this is indeed a Dutch press put out with the "Danger" flip in mind, although whether legit or not, they advise, is unknown. They further offer that any legit release (prior to the post-73 MCA reissue) would have been "pressed on MCA or another Decca subsidiary", which affirms with greater clarity what I thought. So, Dutch market in mind, possibly, and if so, likely the Suriname sweet soul market specifically. Fascinating!

Out of interest, what points you towards that?

First thought was that it is a Dutch release, and perhaps it is. After all, the label is in the traditional orange colour associated with Artone, which released so many great 45s here. Against that though is the point Robb makes - that there's no country of manufacture given. On top of that the mechanical rights organisation is given as BMI rather than the usual Dutch ones of Stemra and Buma. This was released in the Netherlands on MCA, but that release is on the black/rainbow label design, which came in from 1973 onwards. My thinking then is that they'd only put out something like this in the early to mid 70s as a reissue, meaning it did get issued over here in the 60s. However, I've seen no evidence of that - unless this is it. One possibility could be that it's a bootleg pressed for the Suriname market, something not uncommon what with that country once upon a time being a territory of the Netherlands, and one with a huge appetite all of its own for sweet soul, and with interest being in the flip side "Danger". Certainly record shops here are awash with sweet soul 45s from Suriname collectors and DJs who eagerly covered up names and titles of artists and songs - just as the Northern scene did/does - to ensure tunes remained exclusive to the owner. That said, I can't be certain about this theory at all. MCA, Robb… and as you say, no country of manufacture given, which, for now, adds to the mystery as outlined above.

Trying to find out about the copy of Marvin L Sims "Danger/Get off my back" in the pic. I picked it up in Amsterdam yesterday. I'm presuming it to be a reissue. Can anyone confirm? For the sake of clarity, I should say that the pic attached actually comes from Discogs and is identical to the one I have.

Still on YouTube but set to private, meaning, I guess, the only people who can view it are those the poster of the vid gives permission to.

Interesting article here from the Lancashire Telegraph showing the reporting of the illegal "acid house raves" that were taking place around the same time as the nighters... https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/13793051.Blackburn___s_acid_house_raves_remembered/

The same Eddie Walsh as quoted in the newspaper article? https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/article/ex-police-chiefs-key-role-at-ewood-262407.aspx